Anthropology professor and CSWS affiliate Lynn Stephen is among four UO faculty named 2021 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, joining 564 other newly elected members whose work has distinguished them in the science community and beyond.
From Around the O:
This year’s fellows and their areas of research are Lynn Stephen, anthropology; Mike Pluth, chemistry; Jon Erlandson, archaeology/anthropology; and Brendan Bohannan, biology.
“I am so pleased at the important recognition of these outstanding faculty,” said Cass Moseley, interim vice president for research and innovation. “It is a testament to the importance of research, innovation and scientific inquiry at the University of Oregon that researchers from these diverse fields are acknowledged at a national level.”
Transborder lives
Lynn Stephen, Philip H. Knight Chair and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Anthropology, focuses on immigration and asylum in the U.S., gendered violence, race, transborder communities, Indigenous social movements, and diasporas from Mexico and Central America to the U.S., as well as Latinx community histories in the Northwest. Her current research explores access to justice for survivors of gendered violence and the effect of COVID-19 on farmworker health and well-being.
Stephen was cited by the association for “distinguished contributions to the fields of anthropology, Latinx and Latin American Studies, particularly for her theorizing and ethnography of Indigenous women, Indigenous migrants, transborder communities, migration and social movements.”
“Before moving to Oregon more than 20 years ago, I was doing research in a small Indigenous Mixtec community in Mexico when I saw a dozen pickup trucks that had Oregon license plates. That led me to write a book on transborder communities networked across many types of boundaries,” Stephen said. “I have been looking at connections, relations and histories between Indigenous, Latinx and other communities in the hemisphere ever since, with a focus on access to justice and the intersection between culture and politics."
Stephen added, “My research on asylum in the U.S. is connected to policy recommendations on how to improve the system, and my recent collaborative work on the impact of COVID-19 on farmworkers has been connected to recommendations for heat regulations, overtime and improved safety conditions for farmworkers through the Oregon state legislature and in a conversation with U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.